


let it be me (if it's a friend you need)

by fits_in_frames



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-11-04
Updated: 2008-11-04
Packaged: 2018-01-21 01:35:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1532855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fits_in_frames/pseuds/fits_in_frames
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At first, life is easy, simple, clean. Well, maybe not clean in terms of the house itself, but in the way that a sports car is clean when it zooms past you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	let it be me (if it's a friend you need)

**Author's Note:**

> _now i remember all too well_  
>  _just how it feels to be all alone_  
>  _you feel like you'd give anything_  
>  _for just a little place you can call your own_  
>  {ray lamontagne // let it be me}  
> 

Jared realizes it's kind of a stupid idea the second he does it, but he's not even thinking when he offers Jensen a room in his house. He's just helping a buddy out, rumors be damned.

Things change, only slightly, when Sandy calls him and they talk for four hours and she ends up mailing him the ring the next morning. Now they'll have a bona fide bachelor pad, he tells Jensen after it's sunk in that the queen-sized bed he has on layaway won't be necessary. Jensen slaps him on the back and offers to buy him a drink. They get piss-drunk at a bar and crash at Jensen's place one last time, only because it's closer.

*

Their first night in the house together is spent sleeping: Jensen on the couch, Jared upstairs in his bed. It's uneventful and quiet, only interrupted by canine snores at 4 and 4:30.

Jensen's banging around in the kitchen at 6:30, trying to find coffee. Jared lumbers out of bed in just his boxers, doesn't even brush the hair out of his eyes as he grabs the bag out of the fridge and hands it to Jensen, who mutters his thanks and then starts hunting for mugs. Jared debates, briefly, going back to bed, but instead grabs his robe and sits at the kitchen table while Jensen wrestles with the coffee pot. He laughs, and Jensen's ears go red.

"It's my first day," Jensen says tensely, deep in his throat, without turning around, and Jared just grins sleepily at him. This could--should, might--work. They'll see.

*

He feels like things should be more awkward between them--what with Jared's break-up and Jensen's bumbling and that whole thing where even their _sisters_ thought they were sleeping together--but it's not. At first, life is easy, simple, clean. Well, maybe not clean in terms of the house itself, but in the way that a sports car is clean when it zooms past you.

Jensen, he discovers, has three modes--working, couch potato, and dead to the world--which are fairly similar to his working, semi-drunk, and asleep. They glide in and out of the house, sometimes together, sometimes not, and it _works_.

Until they finally, finally get a couple of days off.

It's mid-August, and Jensen has found baseball on Canadian TV. It doesn't matter who's playing, because any taste of home is a good taste, so Jared unearths two bags of microwave popcorn and throws a couple more beers in the fridge. It's something they used to do before Jensen lived here, when they actually had more than five minutes to breathe. It's comfortable for both of them, like settling into an old armchair, and so the question, when Jensen asks it, is only slightly surprising. "You know how we used to be all...grabby with each other?"

"I do," Jared says, chuckling at the thought, throwing back some more popcorn and going for his beer.

"You ever miss that?"

Now that, that was surprising. Jared tries his best not to have anything come out his nose. "What?" he says when he finally swallows.

Jensen, clearly in his own world, continues. "I just--I miss it sometimes."

"Well, if you want me to grope you in public again, I could do that, but I thought we were toning it down a bit. Especially with the whole living together thing. I mean, we don't want people to get the wrong idea."

Jensen looks sideways at him. "Oh, yeah yeah," he says quickly, then takes a good swig of beer. "I just--yeah, of course. In public. Wrong idea. Yeah."

The seventh inning starts, and neither of them brings it up again.

*

They go back to the grind on Monday, and now--now things are awkward. They're kicking ass at work, but the drive to and from is always eerily quiet, and more often than not, they just crash when they get home. Jared chalks it up to long hours and Jensen's late-night phone conversations with Danneel he overhears sometimes.

It's fine with him--they don't really hang out, but that's sort of what happens when you live with someone you're not screwing, right? You get sick of their face for a while, and then after some time apart you welcome the sight of it again. Absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that. He's okay with it, and he hopes Jensen is, too.

*

It's late September before they get another break from work. Jensen texts him on their last day, because they haven't really seen each other since lunch and Jared's staying late to do some pick up shots and Jensen will probably be asleep by the time he gets home. The message simply reads, _basball tmrrw @3?_ Jared laughs at the selective text-speak, and sends back, _ill get beer_. He considers using a smiley face, but decides that would be a bit much.

Jensen, however, is not asleep when Jared gets home; he's sitting at the kitchen table, idly playing with his cell phone.

"Hey," Jared says, throwing his keys in the bowl by the door.

"Hey," Jensen says, smiling stiffly at him.

"What's up?" Jared asks, because, to be honest, he's curious as to how Jensen could work a full day and still be awake at 2AM. He opens the fridge and puts the promised beer on the bottom shelf.

Without looking up, Jensen says, "Just talked to Danneel."

"How is she?" Jared sits at the table, unsure of what else he should do.

"We're, uh," Jensen says, clears his throat, and Jared knows what's coming. "We're taking a break." Just like that.

"Shit, man," Jared says automatically. "I'm sorry."

Jensen just shrugs one shoulder and his mouth twists sadly. "'S probably gonna work out for the best. She's in LA, I'm here--well, you know."

"Yeah, I do," Jared says, and means it. Then, without thinking, "I'm here for you, man."

Jensen looks up, smirks at him. "Thanks."

Before either of them can say anything else, Jared stands up. "Well, I'm dead tired," he says, a little too loudly for his own ears, "so I'm gonna head to bed."

"Yeah," Jensen mumbles. Jared walks upstairs and doesn't look back.

*

Jensen starts drinking at noon, still in his pajamas. Jared orders hot wings at 12:30, hoping the chicken will prevent Jensen from getting falling-down drunk before the game even starts. He plunks his best friend slash housemate in front of the TV, switches on some random station that Jensen's not paying attention to anyway, and answers the door fifteen minutes later. The wings are gone by the top of the third.

At the bottom of the fifth, he realizes that they're sitting too neatly for two guys in their late-twenties-early-thirties with no women around, so he gets up to grab himself another beer, asks Jensen if he wants one (he does), and comes back with two bottles. He hands one to Jensen and plops back onto the couch, haphazardly, trying to loosen the mood, and then it happens--their thighs are not only touching, their thighs are in full-body contact with each other. They both stare at their close-together knees until Jared sits back and cracks open his beer, pretends everything is normal and that there's no tension in the air, certainly not.

Jensen does nothing of the sort. Instead, he turns to Jared. "Jay," he says, a little short of breath, and licks his lips.

Jared pretends to be nonchalant about it, pretends that his fingertips aren't burning up, pretends that he's not just waiting for all the unmentionable things that have been floating around his head to spill out of his mouth, pretends that he wants Jensen to pull his leg away first. He turns his head just slightly and says, "Yeah?"

"I, um." Jensen stops, shifts in his seat, sets his beer on the coffee table. He touches his middle finger to his own knee. He sighs. "I just--I really want to kiss you right now."

Jared feels his mouth go slack, feels the tips of his ears turn red. He leans forward and sets his beer down. Jensen's giving him that wide-eyed _oh god i'm sorry i'm drunk please still be my friend in the morning_ look. His lips are parted, he's holding his breath, his shoulders are tense. And then, because he doesn't know what else to do, Jared leans in and kisses him.

It's just a kiss, a hard, closed-mouthed, all-lips kiss that's over as soon as it starts, but then Jensen kisses back. Jared kisses him again, and again, and again, each time leaving a little more space between his lips, until Jensen's tongue practically melts into his mouth. He cradles Jensen's jaw in one hand and pushes himself up off the couch slightly with the other, gets his leg over one of Jensen's so he doesn't have to crane his neck. He can't stop kissing Jensen, he just can't, especially not when Jensen's hand creeps up his thigh and slips under his t-shirt, warm against his belly. Jensen's other hand is somewhere tangled in his hair, and he only pulls away, just for a second, when something at the back of his head gets yanked and he has to help Jensen get his finger out of the knot. It's a bit ridiculous, really, and they laugh and grin at each other stupidly before Jared completely straddles Jensen and presses their foreheads together, holding Jensen's face in his hands. They just breathe at each other for a second, irregular and saturated and edged with laughter, and then Jensen kisses him, deeply, and Jared wonders how the hell they held out this long.

*

Jared wakes up on the couch around 10 in the evening, Jensen's head in his lap. He doesn't even remember passing out, but they're both still clothed, so that's a good thing. Not that it would be a bad thing if they weren't, he's just not sure he'd be able to explain it to Jensen through a hangover.

Jensen stirs, props himself up with one arm and stretches the other. He smiles at Jared. He's still a little bit drunk, Jared can see it in his half-open eyes, but sober enough to form English sentences.

"We--we made out, right?" he says, as if he was asking what time it was.

There's a moment of silence where Jensen looks up at him, realizing exactly what he just said, but then Jared laughs and Jensen's face relaxes. "Yeah, we did."

"Oh good, I was hoping I hadn't just dreamed it." He rolls off of Jared's thigh and sits up sleepily. "Because if I had, things might be, you know, _awkward_. For me."

"Yeah, awkward for both of us is infinitely better." He elbows Jensen in the side, and grins at him.

"Does it have to be awkward?" Jensen asks after a few seconds, readjusting the elastic on his track pants. He's very pointedly not looking at Jared.

"I, um. I guess not." Jared's heart is in his throat, and he kind of likes it.

Jensen looks up and smiles at him. He touches Jared's thigh with his fingertips. "Thanks for today," he says. Jared nods, understanding exactly what he means. Jensen gets up, walks around the back of the couch towards the bathroom, and pisses with the door open.

Jared calls, "So should I reorder that queen-sized bed?"

"I said let's not be awkward," Jensen calls back, "not 'I'm a slut who puts out at the drop of a hat.'" He sticks his head out of the bathroom while he washes his hands. "Baby steps, Padalecki. Baby steps."

Jared grins at him as he pads over, then leans on the back of the couch and suggests they watch _Iron Man_ for the fiftieth time. He had begun to wonder what exactly he would have done if he hadn't been so stupid as to offer Jensen to place to crash, but then Jensen kisses him and he decides it's not worth thinking about.


End file.
